7 Movie Plot Holes You Didn't Notice Due to Editing (Pt. 2)

The magic of editing means that in just seconds, a movie character can go from attending a party in a tuxedo to being fully dressed in Batman gear by merely cutting from one shot to the next. Movies would suck without this -- nobody wants films to waste time showing Bruce Wayne tediously lacing up his boots and applying the talcum powder that lets him get the rubber mask over his cheeks.

But as we've shown you before, even great movies abuse this power by building key plot points around utterly impossible events hidden by clever edits. Once you start to notice this sort of thing, it's kind of hard to stop asking questions like ...

After being shot in the head by David Carradine, the Bride is left lying in a coma for four years, until she suddenly wakes up just in time to bite a rapist's face off.

Pictured.

She then uses a doorjamb to brain Buck, the skeezy orderly who had been pimping out her comatose body, and steals his keys. Because the muscles in her legs have atrophied from disuse, she has to ride a wheelchair to escape, and the Bride rolls around the parking garage until she finds Buck's truck, then crawls inside. He won't mind, since he's now dead and all.

She would have taken his shoes, too, but they were too small.

Cut To:

As you can see, the Bride spends over half a day lying in the truck before her legs start working again and she is able to drive it the hell out of the garage.

So ... was Buck the only person working at the hospital that night? In the span of 13 hours, did nobody discover two fresh bodies lying in the middle of a suddenly missing coma patient's room? There must have been a shift change at some point -- at the very least, Buck's absence would have been noted, and we have to believe that a patient in the Bride's condition would be monitored pretty closely. When he didn't show up for roll call or respond to pages, and when they saw no updates on the Bride for the past half-day, hospital staff presumably would have sent someone to both look for him and check on her. Honestly, somebody should've tripped over those dead guys within 10 minutes of the Bride making it to the garage.

"Hey, this isn't where we store these."

With a murdered employee and a missing patient, that hospital would've locked down like the Thunderdome while the Bride was still lying in Buck's truck and staring at her feet. Regardless of whether they thought she was responsible (and they probably wouldn't have -- they'd find it way more likely that some lunatic had killed Buck and hauled her comatose ass off like a sack of potatoes), the cops would be covering all exits and combing the building looking for her.

"OK," you think, "but maybe it wouldn't occur to them to look in the parking garage. Maybe they'd be too worried about whether there was a killer loose in the building to go see if Buck's car was missing." Well, sure, we could buy that for an hour or two. But once they'd established that the killer and coma patient didn't seem to be in the building, they'd need to figure out how to track their asses down. And someone (either the cops or a super sleuth doctor) would definitely notice that Buck's keys were gone, because Buck's keys look like this:

And the vehicle they operate looks like this:

The cops don't even search it anymore. The Purell costs were breaking their budget.

Buck drives the gaudiest, most ostentatious truck in the hospital, probably in the entire state, and possibly in continental America. People notice when the Pussy Wagon comes and goes. With Buck dead, his keys stolen and a patient in his care missing, that truck would be the first thing everyone in the history of deductive reasoning would look for, and they would find it plenty fast if it was sitting in one place for 13 goddamned hours.

#6. Ocean's Eleven -- How Did the Fake Money Get into the Vault?

Danny Ocean assembles a crew of thieves to steal $150 million from one of casino owner Terry Benedict's seemingly impregnable vaults (they do such a bang-up job that Benedict catches every single one of them 10 minutes into the sequel). Their incredibly complicated scheme involves breaking into the vault, lacing it with explosives and telling Benedict that they are going to blow up all of his money unless he has it loaded in bags into a van they have parked outside.

Benedict caves in to their demands, but not without calling a SWAT team to secure the vault and having his men follow Ocean's van to the airport.

Cut To:

Benedict's men intercept the van and discover that it's a decoy -- instead of money, each bag is stuffed with thousands of fliers for Las Vegas hookers (which they presumably found by sweeping up one 50-foot stretch of Vegas sidewalk).

"Guys, make sure you collect all of these for ... uh, evidence."

We then find out that the SWAT team is actually Ocean and his crew in disguise, having pulled a hilarious bait-and-switch to now sneak the real money out of the vault.

"Leaving the scene of a crime? Eh, no need to keep my face covered the whole time."

It's a fun, ingenious plan that leaves you guessing right to the end. But, uh ... at what point did they get all those X-rated fliers in there? You know, the bags that they trick Benedict and his men into following? They literally appear out of thin air, piled in the middle of the vault, ready to be picked up.

This isn't a trivial point here -- it's the crux of the entire plan. None of this works without the decoy money in the vault. And it's not a case where it could have been dropped in there between scenes -- only three of the thieves ever go into the vault, and none of them could have been carrying the fliers. First the Amazing Yen is smuggled in inside a cash cart, and there is absolutely no room for six huge duffel bags of titty paper in there.

Yet there is totally room for him to take an Amazing Dump.

Then Ocean and Linus Caldwell propel themselves down an elevator shaft filled with laser beams. Clearly they aren't carrying the fliers, either.

It's like a Mission: Impossible themed rave.

Maybe the rest of the crew brought the fliers with them in the SWAT truck ... except we see the decoy van, already containing the bags of fliers, leaving the casino before the SWAT truck arrives.

Nope, no chance a passing patrolman might radio in about this.

So where in the name of The Peacemaker did the decoy money bags come from? On the DVD commentary, the filmmakers admit that not even they know the answer (we're telling you this so that you don't ever find yourself listening to the Ocean's Eleven commentary track). In a movie focused entirely on the cleverness of a master thief, they never bother to explain how he accomplished the most crucial aspect of his plan. We suppose the only explanation is that Benedict stored the fliers in the vault himself to protect them from Julia Roberts.

#5. Superman II -- How Did Lois and Clark Get Back from the Fortress of Solitude?

Clark Kent finally reveals to Lois Lane that he is Superman and decides to take her to the Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole, because evidently she still needs some convincing. Superman realizes that he could never hope to maintain a relationship with Lois as long as he is a son of Krypton (and honestly, if you're considering giving up super alien powers for Margot Kidder, you don't deserve them anyway). He willingly steps into a crystal chamber to expose himself to Red Kryptonian sunlight, stripping himself of everything that makes him awesome and turning himself into a normal person.

"I hope he doesn't think that this means he gets to do butt stuff ..."

Cut To:

Lois and Clark driving in a Chevy to a diner.

This is somewhat less cinematic than flying.

Clearly, they're enjoying their first few days together as a normal couple, and ... waitaminute, how the fuck did they get back from the Fortress of Solitude?

In case you are a relative novice of Superman mythology, the Fortress of Solitude is located at the North Pole. This is not an issue for the Man of Steel -- he just flies back and forth whenever the hell he feels like it.

"I'd secure you with both arms, but the fist-pointing is integral."

However, he gave up the ability to fly when he stepped into that red sunlight chamber. Which, as you may remember, is in the Fortress of Solitude. At the North Pole.

There is literally no way to get in or out of the North Pole that doesn't involve an ice freighter and years of survival training. There's certainly no way that Lois and Clark could have gotten back in such a short period of time unless they had that Narnia closet.

Later on, when Clark realizes that he has made a mistake and decides to go back to the Fortress to restore his powers, the movie just cuts to him already back in the North Pole, walking sadly along like the end credits of The Incredible Hulk. Remember, he still can't fly, and Clark Kent doesn't exactly have the capital to charter an arctic expedition at the drop of a hat. Maybe Bruce Wayne gave him a ride.

"He let me borrow the same teleporter he used to escape a midair nuclear explosion in three seconds."

#4. The Lost World: Jurassic Park -- How Did the Tyrannosaurus Kill Everyone on the Ship?

An expedition to another dinosaur-infested island, consisting of Jeff Goldblum's daughter and Vince Vaughn before he discovered cupcakes, results in a spectacular body count but ultimately sees Tyrannosaurus rex captured at the hands of a bushy-eyebrowed Englishman. They load the prehistoric superbeast onto a cargo ship and transport it to San Diego, because this is without question the greatest idea of all time.

"Great work, men! There is no conceivable aspect of this that could possibly fail!"

Cut To:

Shockingly, the boat carrying the largest terrestrial predator in history crashes into the pier in San Diego because its entire crew has been eatmurdered.

Although the helmsman remained dutifully rooted to his post until the absolute last possible second.

One of the slain crewmen has a death grip on the controls for the ship's cargo hold:

And the hold door is stuck partially open, its motor loudly struggling against some obstruction:

Meanwhile, Jeff Goldblum stares at his script in wide-eyed disbelief.

One ill-advised decision to press the OPEN button in the dead crewman's hand later, T. rex busts loose and starts killing people:

The dinosaur's closest living relative is the Kool-Aid Man.

So ... what happened on the boat, exactly? The Tyrannosaurus broke out, killed everyone, then climbed back into the cargo hold? Maybe, but how could an animal that size have gotten to the people we see lying dead in the wheelhouse? His head wouldn't fit through the windows to bite anyone, let alone any of the doorways. And what about the dead crewman holding the cargo door controls? His body is several yards away from the hold. If they'd successfully lured the Tyrannosaurus back down in there and gotten the doors mostly shut again, how did T. rex manage to kill that guy? With a crossbow? Did the man succumb to some unrelated illness?

Apparently, the filmmakers originally intended to have a bunch of Velociraptors sneak aboard the ship and wipe out the crew. However, the idea was ultimately dropped, probably because they figured that after seeing one of the raptors get killed by a little girl doing gymnastics, the audience could no longer take them seriously. The dead crew angle was never rewritten, though, so we're left to assume that the Tyrannosaurus either has mutant powers or is a spirited practical joker.